Friday, July 16, 2010

Bed, Bath, and Booty

A Bed Bath and Beyond flier came in with the mail.
It was the college edition, titled:
We (heart) College!
It's filled with everything a college freshman will need: sheets, comforters, coffee makers, closet organizers, hair dryers, razors:

And of course, no incoming teen would be complete without her own booty enhancing underwear, also known as, The Booty POP!

Advertised right below hair dryers and flat irons, the booty pop can be found under Health and Beauty while registering for your wedding day, or gathering last minute supplies for college. What's interesting about this ad is the multi-outlet character/light socket (what is that thing?) asking, "Do I even have a booty?" wearing a pair of the underwear. This is meant to distract the reader/consumer from the fact that a sexualized advertisement has been placed in a flier that typically is selling shower curtains and pillow cases.
Don't mind us, just helping you get your daughter ready for college, and making sure she feels insufficient about her arse as she flies the coop.

One may say that BBB commonly sells "as seen on TV" products, even weights and fitness equipment. But do they sell penis enlarging underwear? Are breast enhancement shirts stocked with the slipcovers?

The website for this product shows the same model as the one featured in BBB, though far more dramatically posed. There she is, all sad and skinny, just another flat-bottomed teen, and AFTER!
Sexy bottom is licking a giant lollipop: bootylicious booty POP.

4 comments:

I just read your entire blog, and though this comment has nothing to do with BBB, I wanted to ask you.

Has your daughter seen Princess and the Frog?

I hate Disney Princess Movies... Hate hate hate. Have allowed my daughter to watch them out of sheer desperation of being a single mom to a special needs child. (But NOT Beauty and the Beast! And NOT the first Little Mermaid... those two really rub me the wrong way...) Anyway...

I have to say that Princess Tiana is a pretty damn good example of "good Disney Princess." Works hard, expects the prince who falls for her to work hard, the movie pokes fun at the girl who soley wants to marry a princess, and in a surprising role reversal, the prince attempts to give up aspects of his life in order to make Princess Tiana happy.

Booty pop? Maybe my lack of one of those contraptions is why I didn't date a lot in college.....I didn't have a big enough booty created by an artificial device. :-) Sigh. I'm with you on feeling like the problem is too big to tackle with just small steps, but if you're looking for someone to "walk with", please let me know. This is an issue (the sexualization of girls and the media...not booty pop) near and dear to my heart.

aggykryss--I feel like Tiana could be another post, a few people have mentioned it as an improvement over the worser princess story-lines!First, I commend you for your choosiness in screening out different films, that's not always an easy task, esp. as a single mom to special needs child, where down time can be essentially nonexistent. Second, I kind of saw Princess and the Frog, and by kind of it was like this: playing at our local library, and the sound was barely audible, then blasting, then barely audible, and the projector kept breaking down. So my critique is imperfect from the start. The pros were: Disney finally made a film with a Black Princess. (Fiiiiinally. About time.) The cons: I don't like the beginning scene where Tiana vehemently does not want to kiss that frog, but she's talked into it. I'd have loved for her to say, "No way," and stuck to it! And I don't like that she spends such a large portion of the movie as a frog, not even in her glory as a princess. Finally, I thought it was interesting that the other girl (the blonde bratty one, I forgot her name) was exactly the over-consumer that Disney has stated they strive to create. Her bedroom was decked out with all the toys and things...and she was ceaselessly unsatisfied, a vacuum of want. That's the ideal Disney customer, in my opinion, one they hope to create as a life-long buyer of their stuff.

I understand from other people that of all the princess movies this one, (and others have said Mulan, which I have not seen) are the "best of the worst." My thought is this: our standards are too low. Disney is a huge huge company with a budget that would allow them to do anything. And they keep picking old fairy tales and sexing them up, instead of doing an actual strong female role and creating it in a dramatic and concrete fashion, as they do these endless princess lines. They could market Amelia Earheart or Wilma Rudolph if they so chose. And, that's my two cents. :)

This life of mine---I will take your offer of "someone to walk with" gladly! Although, since you are a runner now, I may have to try to keep up with you :)

I'd love to get your take on Mulan. It's been years since I've seen it, but I found it incredibly refreshing compared to the others. I also am a bit flummoxed that it is considered a "princess" movie. Considering that she isn't a princess. Instead she is an ordinary girl who goes out of her way for her father, and challenges gender norms. What is good about this is that it provides an alternative narrative for kids. However, it is still a scripted narrative and probably has many of the same problems that we see in media for boys (violence, good versus bad rather than nuance etc).

That said, it's probably my favourite Disney movie aimed at girls because the message in Mulan isn't about getting the guy (it's more of a subplot), it's about courage and family. And it may be the lesser of a dozen evils, but I did like it. Also, she's by far one of the least sexualized (the general fall in love with her when she's dressed like a man.)

Welcome to the Disney Princess Recovery Program

I began this blog in April 2010. It was meant to be a 90 day run at recovery. From Disney Princesses.

It's been over 4 years since I first googled "Why the hale are Disney Princesses everywhere?" I found a lot of advertisements for Disney World. And a definition of hale (strong and healthy).

I started writing here and found all sorts of people were asking the same question. Minus hale.

My kid is over the Disney Princesses, but I am into all the stuff I've learned while taking notes and exploring. Now I post whatever catches my mind about: marketing to children, girls, and occasionally squirrels.